Christ the King-Epiphany Church, Wilbraham

Maundy Thursday April 17, 2025

The Rev. Dcn. Michael Hamilton

Good evening, it seems that everything is a bit different tonight as we gather together to celebrate Holy Thursday with 4 of our young members receiving Eucharist for the first time! Congratulations Emma, Rikki, Hazel Mae, and Wilsen, we are very proud of you and are happy that we get to celebrate this with you.

• We had dinner together in the church space. That is different.
• I am going to give the sermon now so I can point out all of the different parts that make tonight special and we can see how the service is different and wonderful and connected together- especially because you are having your First Communion with your guests that you invited, along with your church family and friends.

Tonight, we will hear three stories that explain why today is so special in the church and why it is SO great that you are a part of this celebration!

In the first story God tells Moses to plan a secret meal where all of the Jewish people that were stuck in Egypt as slaves would cook a lamb meal and to put some of the blood from the meat on their doors so God would “Pass-over” their house and no one would be hurt. We know this convinced the Pharoh to release all of the Jewish people and let them go free. God told Moses and the people that every year, they were to remember this event and it was called the “Passover”.

In the second story Jesus is eating the Passover supper with his friends just like Moses told everyone to do, but you know what? Moses told everyone to do that more than 1,400 years before Jesus was even born so Jewish people were still remembering that meal after all that time! But the night that we are hearing about, Jesus adds something to the meal, and it is “sort of” the new Passover meal that we Christians have had for the past 2,000 years. Jesus takes bread, thanks God for the food, then He breaks the bread and gives it to the disciples because he is making a promise to them that God will be with them every time they eat the bread and drink the wine together. Jesus promises this because he also gave the disciples a new commandment. We know about the 10 commandments that God gave to Moses, do not steal, do not lie, do not kill… you remember those, well on this night, Jesus gave us a new commandment that can be very hard sometimes and that is what we hear about in the third story.

The third story is about the Passover meal that Jesus was having when He does something strange. Jesus goes around to each person and washes their feet! What, their dirty feet, are you kidding me? If you lived in Jesus’ time the roads weren’t paved and smooth like we have now, they were all dirt, and dusty, and muddy. Since the disciples did not have air-Jordan sneakers, or work boots they wore sandals and no socks…. How dirty would their feet be? Maybe like this? (show my feet with sandals off). So washing someone’s feet would be a dirty job and it would be strange, but it would be really nice to do that for someone. This is where Jesus gives the new commandment- Jesus says, I wash your feet because I love you and if I do this for you, then you should be showing love to each other. So, the commandment that Jesus gives is, “love one another just like I have loved you!”  That is sort of easy if we are talking about our brothers, sisters, parents, and friends- but what about the people I don’t like? Do you think Jesus meant the mean kid in school that makes fun of other people or is a bully? Yeah, that is a tough one but yes, we have to remember that even if they aren’t nice right now, that God still loves them and Jesus would wash their feet. We know this because Jesus washed the feet of his friend Judas, even though Judas was going to hurt Jesus by having Jesus arrested.

Right now in the world, we have a lot of problems going on and you probably have heard some of it on the news. There is a war in Russia and Ukraine, there is another one in Israel and Palestine- would Jesus wash the feet of The Russians or Ukranians? The Jewish person or the Arab person? Sometimes we think that certain people don’t deserve our kindness because they aren’t like us. There are people that can’t stop drinking alcohol, or people that are addicted to drugs. There are homeless people, poor people, and rich people too. There are people that come from another country and speak a different language or eat different foods. But you know what, Jesus would wash all of their feet, or show kindness and love because that is what he meant when he said to “love one another as He has loved us”. That really is difficult sometimes. In life we will meet people that are hungry or don’t have enough clothes and this picture shows Jesus giving the person what they need by taking off His robe and giving it to them and then washing their feet because He wants us to do the same thing when we see someone that needs our help. Jesus reminds us that some people are afraid and maybe feel sad most of the time- for those people we could say a prayer for them, listen to them, and show them that we care about them as a way of loving them like Jesus loved them. There are people that we forget to say thank you to, there are Nurses and Doctors, and Police, Firefighters, Soldiers, and ambulance drivers that try to heal and protect people during difficult times and Jesus would wash their feet and say thank you because they help make our life a little bit safer. They take care of God’s people and we should do what we can too. 

So tonight, we have a dinner with friends and family, we remember the first Passover when God showed Moses how to lead the people into freedom. Then 1400 years later, Jesus and his friends were telling the Passover story during a meal, like we are doing now, and during that meal, Jesus washed the feet of the disciples and told us to ‘love one another like He has loved us’. Now we listen to the stories 2,000 years later and think about what Jesus has asked us to do, and to pray for all of the people that we have a difficult time loving because we know, that if they were here tonight, Jesus would wash their feet and ask us to do that too.

Wishing you a blessed Passover, the experience of accepting Jesus’ strength and love in the Eucharist, and the courage to love one another as Jesus loves us.  Amen.